On Saturday morning Jenson Button qualified in first place for the Malaysian Grand Prix ahead of Jarno Trulli. At one stage the gap separating pole and second place was just 1/1000th of a second. I was watching the BBC's Eddie Jordan explain what that meant in real terms. He said it equated to the width of match.

Bored waiting for the Grand Prix to begin on Sunday morning, I thought I'd check.

Length of the circuit: 3.444 km
Truli qualifying time: 1:35.273 or 95.273s
Average speed: 3444/95.273 = 36.149 m/s

Distance covered each 1/1000th of a second: 0.036m = 3.61cm

Width (diameter) of a match: 0.2cm
but
Height of a match stick = 3.7cm

...so Eddie was kind of right. O, the stick I'm going to get if anyone actually reads this!